San Francisco (CA) - Samsung has announced that it will start selling the Q1 ultra mobile PC (UMPC) at Best Buy. The Q1 is a small keyboard-less computer that will play back music and videos, but will also have some horsepower to do work.

To kick off the US launch, Samsung, along with executives from Intel and Microsoft, demoed the product to the gawking press in San Francisco. Fortunately, the demo went much smoother than last month’s horrendous briefing in Seoul, Korea, where the vice president of Samsung and the Korean presidents of Intel and Microsoft all suffered severe problems with their UMPCs.

In essence, Samsung’s UMPC, along with upcoming computers from competitors, resembles an oversized PDA with laptop-like components. A Celeron M ultra-low voltage CPU running at 900 MHz gives the Q1 enough power to run some productivity applications, but the lack of a keyboard makes typing in numbers and sentences difficult. Fortunately, Q1 will include Windows Touch Pack which is a suite of touch-sensitive applications that is part of the Windows Tablet PC operating system. Users can also choose to connect a keyboard through the two USB 2.0 ports or simply write on the seven-inch 800 by 480 pixel screen.

The storage and memory specs of the Q1 are comparable to a low-end laptop. 512 Mb of RAM and a 40 Gb hard-drive are standard, with the memory upgradable to 1 Gb. The standard battery lasts around 3 hours, but larger (thus heavier) batteries can be purchased. The unit weighs 1.7 pounds with standard batteries.

Wireless connectivity is built-in with an 802.11 b/g internal adapter and Bluetooth v2.0. In addition there is a 10/100 Ethernet port. A VGA port allows executives to display Powerpoint presentations without lugging a laptop around, but the lack of a keyboard is what derailed Samsung’s Powerpoint presentation at its Seoul press event last month.

The UMPC concept originally started as Microsoft’s Origami project to build a hybrid PDA/laptop alternative. In the coming months, Asus, Averatec, Founder, and Via will introduce competing UMPCs. Curiously, the Q1 does not have a GPS unit, although Averatec has promised that its upcoming AHI UMPC will have GPS.

The Q1 will start selling on May 7 for $1,099 on Best Buy’s Web site. Some Best Buy stores will also get shipments this summer. While the price is certainly higher than the $600 - $1,000 dollar range consumers had been promised by Microsoft two months ago, there are likely to be some "early adopters" waiting in the wings.